... on Mon, 03 2003, (grampa)Albert Lunde writes in response to Igor:
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Long "o". The combination "ou" is one of the conventional ways of writing 
long "o" in romanized Japanese. Since the more technically
 
"correct" romanizations use non-ASCII characters to put a mark above
the vowel, you see "ou" used a lot in e-mail.
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     I can kinda see Igor's point though... whether or not both vowels would 
garner their own syllabic length, or whether it should combine as just one 
single syllable.
 

     It can be quite confusing when trying to figure out the correct "tone" 
when the "spelling" may not be the right one, no matter how 'adapted' it may 
be.
 

     I'm guessing what Igor was trying to pull out was what the correct 
length of the word is, not necessarily how it's supposed to sound.